Japan’s JGC Corporation has won a contract to build shale gas facilities in the northwest of Saudi Arabia for state oil company Saudi Aramco , industry sources have said
The project, known as System A, will involve building processing facilities, wellheads and pipelines for gas in Turaif, where a big mining project called Waad al-Shamal is under development, Reuters reported.
The contract is estimated to be worth almost US$200mn, sources added.
However, a JGC spokesperson has confirmed that its subsidiary had made a bid for the project but the company has received no official notification of the result.
The contract was supposed to be awarded by end November 2014 with a targeted completion in December 2016 before the bidding process was extended several times, sources have revealed.
Capacity of the gas gathering facility increased to 1.86mn standard cu/m per day from 1.41mn standard cu/m per day when Saudi Aramco originally tendered the project.
Meanwhile, four companies are bidding for another unconventional gas project — System B, which is an expansion of the System A and would be four times as big as System A.
The mining project and a power plant for Saudi Arabian mining company Ma’aden is projected to take 5.66mn cu/m per day of unconventional gas by 2018 from the projects.
The search for natural gas remains a priority for Saudi Arabia as it struggles to keep pace with rapidly rising domestic demand for power and its strategically important petrochemicals industry. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has made appraisals of unconventional gas potential in its northwest, Eastern Province and Empty Quarter.
Saudi Arabian oil officials have provided a new estimate of how much shale gas will be produced in the country. It will pump 56,633 cu/m per day to 1.4mn cu/m per day in 2016, ramping to 14.1mn cu/m per day by 2018 with an end target of 113.2mn cu/m per day by 2025, they added.
